Ainars Galvans's Blog (81)

While browsing some conference materials I’ve seen tutorials on “common metrics”. I’ve seen companies implementing common metrics across all projects. I keep wondering “What Do those metrics Measure and How Do We Know? (c) Cem Kaner..Sometimes I feel like they collect the metrics just for the stake of collecting them: just because they used to help to measure some quality attributes in a project or two a few years or…

This morning I described initial integration test results to my wife (she is not a tester, not even IT) and her answer was brilliant. She said “so basically it means your software components talk to each other quite fine, the developers don’t”. And I realized that's indeed how it looks like (though it is not true).

Disclaimer: what follows is a semi-real story, I've made up a few facts to sound it more dramatical (I'm a writer at the end, not a reporter).It is very hard to write test cases in a way useful for experienced tester, possible to execute for newbie, understandable for business, impressive for manager and smart for developer. It is hard but possible when all the stakeholders are one team with the common goal: to create valuable software. But what it is not the… Continue

Do you know the difference and do you care? I did early in my career, because my primary goal was to advance: to improve my technical skills. I liked my first boss (I was a programmer back then). He wasn’t very good programmer, but was well aware of technology available and challenged me to use whatever he found useful. He let me feel smart, but be kept under control at the same time. My next boss only helped me to feel smart and eventually slowed down my progress…

My ultimate goal in the last week was to automate smoke tests. 70-80% of the tests involve message sending and reading from message queue (JMS) and the necessary message content string manipulations (parse, find, replace,etc.) only 20-30 % involve UI (i.e. testing cases when wrong message must be fixed manually). JAVA is a natural selection for managing JMS (JAVA message service). To make data transfer from messages to UI and back simpler I want a tool to interact with web UI using… Continue

If you analyze your mistake and understand how to avoid the same mistake in future, it is not always enough. Some mistakes are part of our habits. It requires practice (and wasted time) to learn to avoid them. Sometimes we don’t want to waste the time, especially when impact of the mistake is trivial.
I remind it whenever I see developers making the same mistakes over and over again. Especially mistakes that is trivial for me to catch in form of a bug. We are all humans.The same…Continue

When I read anything: weather it’s my next task description (i.e. written by PM who knows little about testing) or blog (by a person who probably know less than me about testing) and it does not make sense, seems stupid or wrong … I try to remember that this is my first reaction. Even if PM is amateur at testing they know about project, customer, developers, etc. something I don’t know. So there should be information for me to learn to make the task reasonable. And to make me an… Continue

Sunday night I was watching S.W.A.T movie enjoying home made wine. Only the next day I realized that I still remember the phrase by Capt. Thomas Fuller: Sometimes doing the right thing isn't doing the right thing.. Captain formed a diverse team watching people attitude rather than reading dossier. He including some people demoted for not doing “the right things” such as obeying commands.

Career for a tester with an attitude?
James Christie saved my time by writing… Continue

In comments to my previous blog Joe raised the question of tester’s honesty. In blog I’ve analyzed reasons for postponing bug reporting and he asked if it is honest to postpone it at all. Another question may be – is it honest not to report at all small bugs that are not going to be fixed anyway? This week I had a not-related discussion with another tester which turned out into… Continue

In my recent blog I mentioned an extreme test reporting case - bugs hidden from some stakeholders. I want to continue this topic. Because my blog motto this year is writing what guru testers don’t typically talk about. Today I want to admit my biggest sin – sometimes I report test passed although I know or at least suspect there is a bug. Some bugs need to mature just like a wine……Continue

Haven’t been in Riga yet? Want attend a cheat test conference? Attending 11th test conference in Riga this summer is for free. Language – English. If you are interested to talk - Call for papers is just announced.One of topics – post agile testing
I’ve been talking on this conference for last 8 years already. One thing intrigued me this year. Call for papers recommend (among other) a topics post agile testing. I… Continue

I just spilled my coffee on the table… what a shame. But wait a bit – I’m the only one in an office and if I clean up before anyone notice - the shame would be all gone, wouldn’t it?
If we fix bug in a sprint where it was introduced then our customer don’t need to know about the bug, do they? We are lucky to have JIRA defect reporting system with it’s ability to mark some bugs confidential hiding them from customers, aren’t we?
There is but one problem when you hide… Continue

Management asks you to estimate testing. You try hard but your estimate is declined because it significantly extend what they had in mind before asking you.... Ever been in such situation?
There is nothing wrong about it! The goal of test estimation isn’t always the estimate. “Test estimation” in a lot of cases is actually a testing (service) quality (how much will we test) negotiation process; i.e. if you estimate twice as much you know you have to test less carefully than… Continue

I’ve been skeptic about articles talking about SOA performance testing special challenges. Last project experience showed I was wrong. There is a specific. It is not directly related to SOA. It is related to fact systems exchanging information must be emulate along with user load. Some of them could create unpredictable load to your system. Besides synchronization process performance may vary a lot depending on the size of delta between systems.

Blogging is my way of thinking about testing and learning more about testing. I’ve been thinking why I’ve not been blogging almost a month. Is not learning a problem for me? Is not learning a problem for an Exploratory Tester?! Yes it is, because learning is part of Exploratory Testing. Read on more of my conclusions I’ve done today

Self deception
I’ve seen blogs which says basically “I’ve not been blogging because too much work to do”. I have just the same… Continue

3 year ago I wroteFor functional testing excuses like “we can’t do good tests without detailed requirements, or too late code freeze” don’t work any more..

But there is an excuse still seem to work – “we don’t have the appropriate tools purchased” or “we don’t have time dedicated for test automation”. A lot of effort is put into manual regression tests and not enough to test new… Continue

I’ve seen companies that differentiate salary based on list of “responsibilities”. Only execute written test cases - junior role and salary is low. If you design tests – intermediate, able to define approach/strategy/plan – senior.
However doing Exploratory Testing requires single person to do everything. So everyone deserves the same salary, right?! Wrong!What’s a difference between junior and senior ET?
The difference is skill, right? Now what difference does it to the… Continue

No, not again! I was told by a customer management to provide more visibility into test process. Recently I’ve blogged series of providing visibility into functional testing, but I was so busy with functional testing that forgot about non-functional. I’m still working on ways to provide the visibility, so today I only wanted to blog about how essential it is to be able to provide it.

Who is your Dr Watson?
We learn a lot about Sherlock Holmes from… Continue

So as a tester I’m a big proponent of Exploratory Testing. But as a test manager I know it’s hard to manage. Even harder to describe what’s done. Yet harder: to understand and describe what’s left. The hardest: to do it so that both developers and customers would understand. I don’t fool myself anymore hoping they understand the QA language. I know: everyone have their own interpretation of test case and bug statistics I’m providing. I've realized that my real problem is translation between… Continue